HOTELIERS TO FIGHT FILNER IN COURT OVER TOURISM FUNDS
TOURISM GROUP WILL SUE

“Filner can’t get a second bite of the apple by refusing to sign the contract. What Filner is trying to do is impose his will by doing a late veto that no one can override.”

In an interview Sunday with U-T San Diego, Filner said it would better serve the hoteliers’ interests to negotiate with him rather than engage in a protracted legal battle.

“The suit is a threat; one that I don’t respond very well to, and suits ... take forever, right?” Filner said. “So if they want something to happen, we should negotiate rather than try to bring it to court. We’d like to come to at least a short-term agreement until we work out some of these more longer-term things.”

The city’s tourism bureau, which relies on the marketing district for 80 percent of its budget, already has postponed a planned $5.4 million ad campaign to promote San Diego in advance of the summer tourist season. Tourism leaders are convinced that without any advertising to reinforce San Diego as an appealing vacation destination, rival cities will benefit, costing San Diego millions in lost revenues and at least 2 million room nights.

Filner has said that if the marketing effort is so crucial, hotel owners could agree to voluntarily assess themselves out of their own revenues without going to the city for approval. The current 2 percent room surcharge was overwhelmingly approved last year by hotel owners in a mail ballot election, although it still needed to be validated by the council along with the operating plan for the district.

The lodging industry counters that it already hands over to the city more than $150 million a year in revenues generated by the city’s 10.5 percent room tax. The move to form a tourism marketing district came about several years ago when hoteliers saw monies budgeted for tourism promotion steadily dwindle as the cash-strapped city relied more heavily on the room tax revenues to fund basic city services.

“We’ve already given the city 100 percent of the TOT (transient occupancy tax). When is enough enough?” said Bill Evans, executive vice president of Evans Hotels, which owns the Catamaran, Bahia and The Lodge at Torrey Pines. “The deal was approved by a majority of the council and approved by the mayor (Sanders), so it makes no sense to me as a hotel person why he would be holding so many jobs hostage.”

In addition to the standoff with Filner, the marketing district has been targeted in two lawsuits challenging the legality of the hotel surcharge. Attorney Cory Briggs, who is handling one of the lawsuits on behalf of San Diegans for Open Government, had written a letter to Filner urging him not to sign the agreement.